Dr. Lecter
10-01-2008, 11:35 AM
Last year's preseason write-ups for the Buffalo Sabres played out, strangely enough, exactly as predicted. The young team found it difficult to recover from the offseason losses of co-captains Daniel Briere and Chris Drury to free agency. A well-built team that went to back-to-back conference finals fell down the standings and out of the playoffs, a dramatic drop that had as much to do with the on-ice defections as the locker room void left by the two leaders.
"Thinking realistically, it's a sport that's a business and now has an environment with a salary cap where you can't predict what's going to happen year to year," Sabres goalie Ryan Miller told ESPN.com. "The landscape changes so much that you just have to expect that you put your team together and you move forward as best you can as a whole. I think last year we weren't mature enough to handle it right off the start."
The Sabres muddled through the first half of the season, trying to adjust to the losses of Briere and Drury, not to mention not having veteran defenseman Teppo Numminen in the lineup while he battled a heart problem. Buffalo turned it around in the second half, going 20-12-9, but it was too little, too late.
Link. (http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/preview2008/team?page=nhlpre08/buf)
"Thinking realistically, it's a sport that's a business and now has an environment with a salary cap where you can't predict what's going to happen year to year," Sabres goalie Ryan Miller told ESPN.com. "The landscape changes so much that you just have to expect that you put your team together and you move forward as best you can as a whole. I think last year we weren't mature enough to handle it right off the start."
The Sabres muddled through the first half of the season, trying to adjust to the losses of Briere and Drury, not to mention not having veteran defenseman Teppo Numminen in the lineup while he battled a heart problem. Buffalo turned it around in the second half, going 20-12-9, but it was too little, too late.
Link. (http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/preview2008/team?page=nhlpre08/buf)